Cinematic Italian Third Worldism during the cold war

What is it about?

The Italian film I dannati della terra (The Damned of the Earth) (by Valentino Orsini and Alberto Filippi 1968) is a prominent example of the connection between the European cinema of intervention and the Third World struggles of the 1960s. Set as a 'film within a film', the movie tells the story of a leftist filmmaker, Fausto Morelli, who faces the challenge of finishing a film about the liberation struggles of sub-Saharan Africa by building on the documentary footage that was bequeathed to him by his student and friend, the young Abramo Malonga, an African (Bantu). This article recovers overlooked and little-known documents about the film to show that it is the expression of an active cinematic Third Worldism forged in previous years between the legacy of the Resistenza Partigiana (Italian Resistance) and the Third World struggles of the 1960s. At the same time, the article analyses the ways in which the film 'dialogues' with experimental trends of the contemporary avant-garde artistic scene (1968) in order to challenge the viewer to debate the 'open ideological hypothesis' of the film and take an active part in the political struggles of the time.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Although academic literature has hardly referred to the film I dannati della terra (The Damned..), in recent years, it was recovered within the framework of studies on Third Worldism in 1960s Italy. In this article, I recover overlooked and little-known documents about the film to contribute to these and other studies on Italian Third Worldism during the 1960s. I try to show that The Damned is not a product of the European 1968 (although almost all critics date it to 1969) but rather the expression of an active cinematic Third Worldism forged in previous years.